The goal in business is no longer to win but to keep the game going

We humans love to win. We love the competition. The go hard or go home. Our businesses are built on this ethos.

There is a race and we are all in it.

Think about it. Who are you competing against? Do you know your competitors in business? Have you thought about your personal competitors, named or not? The people you compare yourself to? I want to be like them? I want my business to be that big, that profitable, that innovative….that……???…ad nauseam.

We are addicted to winning….at all costs.

But at some point the cost becomes too high. We wake up one day and find that we may have lost ourselves along the way. Or our business may look nothing like what we wanted to create when we started?

The win may have become bigger than the game itself.

Here is something to think about. What if the goal was to keep the game going? To still be there after everyone who won has gone home to get smashed in celebration?

What if we built enduring businesses? Businesses that allowed humanity to all be here for the long term? That focused on leaving everything behind in better shape than when we started?